White people have a long history of feeling threatened whenever a minority group exposes the injustices they’ve experienced. We see this every day in the media when individuals attempt to downplay the killing of black men and women and launch reactionary hashtag activist movements like #AllLivesMatter and #CopsLivesMatter. And now that black students across America are finally saying they’ve had enough, white counter-groups (and a few black students who drank the colonial kool-aid) are attempting to discredit their concerns and fight against what some have hilariously labeled “group think.”

One such group is the Princeton Open Campus Coalition whose mission, according to their Facebook page, is “Protecting diversity of thought and the right of all students to advance their academic and personal convictions in a manner free from intimidation.” The National Reviewnotes this group was formed to “to push back against the recent wave of politically correct suppression of open academic discourse on campus,” i.e. a bunch of white kids (and a couple of Black ones too) got together and decided things are going just swell and they wrote a letter to the school’s president to prove it.

It can be assumed the tipping point for this letter was last Wednesday’s sit-in organized by the Black Justice League, a campus group demanding president Christopher Eisgruber do the following: add a diversity requirement to the core curriculum; create a safe space dedicated to minorities; require mandatory cultural-competency training for the faculty; and strip the name and imagery of Woodrow Wilson from all of its institutions and buildings, as The New Yorker reported. It’s to those demands that the Open Campus Coalition responded in this manner:

Dear President Eisgruber,

We write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition to request a meeting with you so that we may present our perspectives on the events of recent weeks. We are concerned mainly with the importance of preserving an intellectual culture in which all members of the Princeton community feel free to engage in civil discussion and to express their convictions without fear of being subjected to intimidation or abuse. Thanks to recent polls, surveys, and petitions, we have reason to believe that our concerns are shared by a majority of our fellow Princeton undergraduates.
Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that it is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton.

This dialogue is necessary because many students have shared with us that they are afraid to state publicly their opinions on recent events for fear of being vilified, slandered, and subjected to hatred, either by fellow students or faculty. Many who questioned the protest were labeled racist, and black students who expressed disagreement with the protesters were called “white sympathizers” and were told they were “not black.” We, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, refuse to let our peers be intimidated or bullied into silence on these–or any–important matters.

First, we wish to discuss with you the methods employed by protesters. Across the ideological spectrum on campus, many people found the invasion of your office and refusal to leave to be troubling. Admittedly, civil disobedience (and even law-breaking) can sometimes be justified. However, they cannot be justified when channels of advocacy, through fair procedures of decision-making, are fully open, as they are at our University. To adopt these tactics while such procedures for debate and reform are in place is to come dangerously close to the line dividing demonstration from intimidation. It is also a way of seeking an unfair advantage over people with different viewpoints who refuse to resort to such tactics for fear of damaging this institution that they love.

Second, we welcome a fair debate about the specific demands that have been made.
We oppose efforts to purge (and literally paint over) recognitions of Woodrow Wilson’s achievements, including Wilson College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and his mural in Wilcox Dining Hall. As you have noted, Wilson, like all other historical figures, has a mixed legacy. It is not for his contemptible racism, but for his contributions as president of both Princeton and the United States that we honor Wilson. Moreover, if we cease honoring flawed individuals, there will be no names adorning our buildings, no statues decorating our courtyards, and no biographies capable of inspiring future generations.

We worry that the proposed distribution requirement will contribute to the politicization of the University and facilitate groupthink. However, we, too, are concerned about diversity in the classroom and offer our own solution to this problem. While we do not wish to impose additional distribution requirements on students for fear of stifling academic exploration, we believe that all students should be encouraged to take courses taught by professors who will challenge their preconceived mindsets. To this end, the University should make every effort to attract outstanding faculty representing a wider range of viewpoints–even controversial viewpoints–across all departments. Princeton needs more Peter Singers, more Cornel Wests, and more Robert Georges.

Similarly, we believe that requiring cultural competency training for faculty threatens to impose orthodoxies on issues about which people of good faith often disagree. As Professor Sergiu Klainerman has observed, it reeks of the reeducation programs to which people in his native Romania were subjected under communist rule.

We firmly believe that there should be no space at a university in which any member of the community, student or faculty, is “safe” from having his or her most cherished and even identity-forming values challenged. It is the very mission of the university to seek truth by subjecting all beliefs to critical, rational scrutiny. While students with a shared interest in studying certain cultures are certainly welcome to live together, we reject University-sponsored separatism in housing. We are all members of the Princeton community. We denounce the notion that our basic interactions with each other should be defined by demographic traits.

We hope that you will agree to meet with us. We will be happy to make ourselves available to meet in your office at your earliest convenience. We are also requesting a meeting with the Board of Trustees. For reasons you have articulated in your recent message to the community, there is no time to waste in having these discussions.

Unlike their counterparts at other universities, Princeton undergraduates opposed to the curtailment of academic freedom refuse to remain silent out of fear of being slandered.
We will not stop fighting for what we believe in. Thank you very much for your consideration. We look forward to your reply.

So funny how white people think other ethnic groups having a safe space to express their thoughts and beliefs automatically proposes danger for them, especially when that’s been their M.O. since the beginning of time. If only they could see how the irrational fear that led them to write this silly letter is equal to how minorities feel on campus and in this country every single day, maybe then they’d finally apply rational thought to the very real needs and concerns of their peers of color. Sadly, until the African American students who’ve joined this movement, adding disheartening credence to campus coalitions such as this one, wake up themselves, it’ll be some time before non-minorities see the light. It’s one thing to disagree with the black students’ revolutionary method of approach, it’s quite another to align oneself with a reactive group whose goal is to push back against the needs of minorities rather than push forward a progressive agenda.

There’s just never an end to the bullshit, is there? The students who penned this letter actually had the audacity to compare cultural sensitivity training to Communist re-education campaigns. In other words, to these white people, learning how not to act like a flaming racist shitbag toward people of color is tantamount to a forced campaign of oppression.

How dare you suggest that they don’t have a right to make their hatred known to Black people verbally or physically, if they so choose? This is OPPRESSION! You’re a racist for suggesting that racists be less racist! Only racist people can even SEE racism, don’t you know that?!!!!11!!1

Don’t you love how white people are ALWAYS the victims, even when they’re not? It’s truly a magical gift.

Another way to re-oppress the already oppressed. Giving over analytical viwe points and then comparing them to one another.

That’s what white people do. They find ways to make African-Americans look stupid and wrong.

We as African-American need to stick together and not let this stupid cry baby shit get to us. The revolution is coming and white people know it.

CoolChic

Keep fighting. Never be disheartened by the B.S. that comes your way.

Mary Burrell

I am viewing MSNBC Melissa Harris-Perry and the discussion of Woodrow Wilson. I was never good at history i will be honest and admit this. With that being said didn’t know he was a segregationist and a racist although i am not surprised. I know about Thomas Jefferson and i even learned the Kennedy’s might have been racist as well. It will benefit me in the future to read more about the American Presidents past and present.

In any movement of social change, opposition will come about. The letter form the reactionary Open Princeton group is counterrevolutionary, wrong, and it is filled with lies about courageous black people who want real change in college campaigns nationwide. Opposing evil orthodoxy is the essence of promoting the diversity of thought. I know about Woodrow Wilson for years. Wilson was a racist and he once opposed involvement in WWI and then he supported it. He praised the film “Birth of a Nation.” The letter ironically is trying to suppress the views of the black campus activists who reject the status quo. Protesting in behalf of black human dignity is part of freedom of speech (the actions of the black activists actually expands the dialogue). The protesters aren’t advocating re-education camps, so the letter is filled with innuendo and overt lies. The people, who made the letter, omitted that mercantilists and capitalists murdered millions of Africans, Native Americans, Indians, Aboriginals, Asians, and other peoples of the world for over five centuries. The letter says that they want to have a “preserving an intellectual culture” which code for them desiring to promote Eurocentric values. The letter ignores how black students in Princeton and I other campuses nationwide are called the N word, are harassed, are discriminated against, and experience higher tuition as compared to even 10 years ago. Faculty has to do its job in addressing these issues.

So, we will keep on fighting for justice. We will never praise racist Presidents like Wilson (whose League of Nations plan never worked). We will praise heroes from Augusta Savage to Ella Baker. African Americans (and black people in general) are still here, we are strong, and we will continue to advocate for liberation.

vintage3000

Exactly, their wording is code for wanting to keep their school white as possible, as well as trying to be slick and imply the Black students are not academics nor intellectual. What is more intellectual than students peacefully and strategically advocating for a culture where everyone is treated with respect? I am sure these same white students gleefully crow about how Muslim terrorists, ISIS, etc. are envious of our freedom of speech as Americans; and here they are crying because Black citizens of this country are rightfully speaking up about the injustices on their campus.